


The Collection

by Kylo_Rens_Slashed_Face (gorgonbunny)



Series: Give Me Your Eyes, I'll Give You My Heart [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AU, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, The Dark Side of the Force, body parts, kylo has a collection of body parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-08 09:17:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7751959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgonbunny/pseuds/Kylo_Rens_Slashed_Face
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armitage insists that Kylo shows him his collection of body parts. And everything goes fine. Until it doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Collection

**Author's Note:**

> Because sometimes we end up hurting the ones we love, even when we have the best intentions. Although, when those intentions involve the Dark Side, we probably should have known better to begin with.  
> (But, don't worry, it's not all that bad.)
> 
> I had a request to see Kylo's collection, so this an interim chapter for "Give Me Your Eyes, I'll Give You My Heart". There's no gore, but there are body parts. 
> 
> Warning for: body parts, eyes, organs etc...

 

They lie together on the bed, Kylo running his fingers through Armitage’s long, red hair, while Armitage listens to Kylo’s heart. It is an odd steady rushing now, not the normal rhythmic thumping he is used to.

“It’s weird,” Armitage says.

Kylo laughs, wincing, his ribs still very tender, “You think so?”

“Yeah, I suppose I’ll get used to it, though.” He sits back to look at Kylo, “But, I love ...this.” Armitage slides the ornate box sitting on his bedstand over to him. He puts both hands gently on the box. Even though Kylo’s heart was no longer pumping blood, he can feel it pulsating in the Force. He opens the box to look at it. It is shiny, red and pink, frozen in crystal clear hyaline carbonite. The preservation process left no seams or other marks. Touching it is the only way to tell it had been encased, it is smooth like glass.

After Armitage had apparently spent too much time caressing the heart, Kylo rolls onto his side, “Hey, don’t tell me you’d rather spend your time with that than with me.”

“No, it’s just, it’s comforting,” Armitage says, “Isn’t that why you wanted me to have it, so I could enjoy it?”

“I wanted you to have it so we could feel each other when we were apart, not so you could ignore me while I’m here,” Kylo says.

Armitage put the heart back in its box and sets it aside, “So, you’re jealous of your own heart?”

Kylo tries to seize him in an embrace, but Armitage’s wiggling is enough to make him ease off.

Armitage scoffs, “Giving up so easily?”

Kylo sighs, rubbing his chest, Armitage admiring how neatly his incision was healing, “Well, I seem to have a distinct disadvantage.”

“I thought pain helped you focus,” Armitage smiles at him.

“It helps me do a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still feel it, so you could show a little compassion,” Kylo grumbles.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” Armitage says, poking him in the ribs, “Anyway, you said you’d show me your creepy eyeball collection today, so don’t try to distract me, again.”

“Fine, fine, just let me take a shower first,” Kylo stands with a small moan. “Want to join me?” He asks as he makes his way to the refresher.

“No,” Armitage says.

“Aw,” Kylo sighs as pathetically as he can muster.

“If you didn’t take freezing cold showers, then I would join you.”

“Cold showers are stimulating,” Kylo says.

Armitage rolls his eyes, he's getting pretty good at it.

As Kylo showers, Armitage looks in the mirror at his new, crystal eyes. They are a fathomless blue, almost glowing, disconcertingly pupilless, which he anticipates will make him more intimidating. Peering closer he can see the crystals’ trigons getting infinitesimally smaller, hypnotically refracting light in a thousand different directions. He has found that he has to pay attention to blinking frequently enough, otherwise, it seems that he can stare indefinitely, which, he admits, could give him a psychological advantage.

Kylo steps out of the shower behind him. Still dripping wet, he wraps his arms around Armitage’s waist, kisses the back of his neck, then looks at their reflection in the mirror.

“I love my new eyes,” Armitage says.

“I love your new eyes, too,” Kylo turns to give him a brief kiss, “They’re almost as beautiful as your old eyes.”

Without drying off, Kylo dresses in a clean shirt and pants - Armitage assumes that they are clean as Kylo is, as always, wearing black and could be covered in bloodstains for all he knew - and leads Armitage to his meditation room door.

Kylo pauses and says, “Are you sure?”

“I cut your heart out and put it in a box next to my bed, I think I handle it,” Armitage says, even though he feels through the Force a coldness emanating from the room. Or maybe it’s blackness, it’s hard to tell, he’s still not used to all these Force sensations or how to interpret them. But, whatever it is, it doesn’t feel pleasant.

“There's more to it than that. Do you know about the Dark Side?” Kylo asks.

“Yes, of course. You talk about it incessantly.” Armitage says.

“The Force is like an interwoven tapestry, Dark and Light,” Kylo interlaces his fingers, “Even though they are intertwined, Dark and Light energies come from different places.” He separates his fingers.

Armitage nods, getting impatient, he knows all this, but when Kylo preached about the Force, he knew better than to interrupt him. 

Kylo continues, raising his hands into fists for emphasis, “There are some places that are more Light or more Dark. This is room is very strong with the Dark Side.”

“Are you worried that I won’t be able to handle the Dark Side?” Armitage asks with an air of self-assurance, even though he'd only been Force-sensitive for a day and knew next to nothing about how the Force actually worked.

Kylo looks down, bites his lip, then, after an awkward pause, looks back to him, “No, I trust you, I’m just giving you a warning.” Armitage glances at the door and, if he’s honest with himself, he feels a sense of dread, a sense that should signal him to avoid the situation.

“You don’t have to treat me like I’m made of glass, Kylo,” Armitage says, “And, besides, how do you know that I don’t have some dark secrets of my own?”

Kylo tilts his head at him, “Do you?”

“Maybe.” He did have some secrets that he hadn’t told Kylo and that Kylo didn’t know about. At least, Kylo shouldn't know about them, unless he had been reading his thoughts without his permission. If he did know, Kylo never let on that he did.

Kylo nods as he brushes his hand over the panel next to the door, door swishes open revealing a black curtain. He pushes back the curtain, allowing Armitage to go in first.

The chamber doesn’t look like any other room on the _Finalizer_. It is heptagonal with wooden walls lined with wooden shelves up to a high, arched ceiling. Dozens of boxes of varied size and design, all with intricate carvings or inlays, fill the shelves. Next to each box is a small illuminator, generating the only light in the room. Armitage feels very, very cold as he steps through the door. Kylo closes the door with a swipe of his hand, pulls the curtain closed behind him, then closes a folding wooden partition that is on the inside of the chamber. The little rattle of it clicking closed makes Armitage twitch.  He realizes that he is shivering. Kylo puts a hand around his shoulder.

“How do you meditate in here? It’s freezing,” Armitage says, holding his arms.

“That’s not cold you’re feeling, it’s Darkness,” Kylo tells him.

They stand for few minutes in silence. Kylo looks away from him. Armitage can sense his discomfort, but he isn’t sure if he’s uncomfortable at Armitage being in his private chamber, or at him knowing his secret obsession.

The Force in here feels prickly, it quavers around the boxes, as if trying to pry them apart, then flicks around like swarms of deranged insects.

“Go ahead, have a look around,” Kylo says with a demure wave of his hand. Armitage looks along the shelves, admiring the craftsmanship of the boxes, each beautiful and unique. Some of them have detailed images on them, while others have bold, geometric shapes.

“I take it that none of these came from willing donors,” Armitage muses.

“Not most of them, no,” Kylo says.

“Did you blind any of my Stormtroopers? Are any of their eyes in here?” Armitage asks.

“No, Dear General, you should know me better than that,” Kylo says defensively.

“It seems that I hardly know you at all,” Armitage says, returning to perusing the shelves. He is drawn to one box in particular. It has a tangle of Force energy around it, like an incandescent spider web. It’s a bit bigger than most of the other boxes, resting on a cloth so black it seems to be made of darkness, palm-sized, glowing polyhedrons to either side.

As he reaches for it, the Force gets pricklier, stabbing at his fingers. He withdraws his hand.

“That one is very special,” Kylo says, taking it off the shelf and lifting the lid to show him. A hand. A complete right hand severed at the wrist. “It belonged to Luke Skywalker, a very powerful Jedi Master, Ben Solo’s Master.”

Kylo had told him about Ben Solo once, he had been a pupil of The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker. Kylo had slaughtered him when he and the Knights of Ren destroyed the New Jedi Temple that Skywalker had been rebuilding. He wonders if he had gotten Skywalker’s hand then.

“It had already been cut off many years before it came into my possession,” Kylo tells him.

“How did you get it?” Armitage asks, eyeing it as if it was going to come to life at any second. 

“You can find just about anything on the Blackmarket. There are traffickers of these kinds of artifacts, and they usually don’t know how valuable or how powerful they actually are,” Kylo says, “It’s what started my collection. I didn’t know how powerful it was, either. I was buying another artifact, and the trader had this, too, so I figured I’d look at it, out of curiosity.”

An odd, distant look comes over his face as he glides a finger over the hand, almost touching it. He closes his eyes, whispers something to himself.

“Kylo?” Armitage says, pulling Kylo out of his reverie.

He looks at Armitage with a dark glint in his eye, holding the box possessively to his chest. He closes the lid and sets it back in its place of honor, stroking it reverently, before turning back to Armitage, saying lowly, “I don’t always like the memories that it digs up.”

"Why do you keep it, then?" Armitage asks.

"Because sometimes it's the unpleasant things that make us stronger," Kylo says.

There is another cold silence. Armitage looks back at the shelves, regarding the boxes from a respectful distance like they are museum pieces.

"You may open them," Kylo says. Armitage hadn't been waiting for permission to open them, he'd actually been afraid to. The Darkness that surrounded them is intimidating enough, he doesn't know if he is prepared for what lies inside. But, now Kylo is expecting him to open one of them, and he had pestered Kylo about showing him the collection, so he now feels obligated.

He picks up one of the boxes. It feels cold, almost barbed. It’s not the comforting pulsing of Kylo’s heart. He tilts the lid, a pair of blood-red eyes stare at him, glassy and wet, like they were freshly plucked from their owner’s head, preserved perfectly in transparent carbonite. They are certainly not Stormtrooper eyes. He can distantly feel the Force presence of whoever these eyes belonged to, he faintly hears their screaming, feels their anger and hatred burning into him. He feels smug and powerful, obviously the victor, but they had put up a noble fight. It’s like he’s experiencing someone else's memories as his own, experiencing not only their memories but their emotions as well. It’s not anywhere close to the rush he’d felt while removing Kylo’s heart, but thrilling nonetheless, and much, much colder...Darker.

“... he was trying to save his village, his family,” Armitage whispers.

“Yes, his name was Drav Vel’lik, a very honorable warrior, tried to face me head-on, when a smarter, but more underhanded move would have been to attack from the back, not that it would have ended any differently for him, of course,” Kylo says.

Armitage closes the box and sets it back on the shelf. He runs his hands along the shelf, sensing the energies coming from each box. Mostly anger, hatred, fear, but each distinct. He stops at a dark, almost black, box, with nearly imperceptible engravings. He opens it. What looks kind of like a black kidney is inside. Its energy is purely animal, without thought, all instinctual.

“The venom gland of a zolall,” Kylo tell him. Armitage knows that assassins use the poison from zolalls to make deadly toxic darts. He also knows that in small, diluted quantities doctors often use it as a sedative and analgesic. He supposes that its presence in this collection represents the tenuous thread between the lethal and the sanative.

Armitage closes its box and continues to move his hand along the shelf, opening a few more boxes: A fanged lower jaw complete with tongue - a Schiav that had insulted one of the Knights of Ren, so obviously had to have his profane tongue ripped from his face, his jaw came along as a bonus.  Part of a spine - a Kage that had managed to kill at least a half a dozen Stormtroopers with a mere blade before being taken down; Kylo had admired him so much that he tried to convert him to the First Order before ultimately defeating him in a duel.  A heart - a Force-sensitive that Kylo had wanted to train as an apprentice, but Snoke had refused him that request and ordered Kylo to kill instead. Each one channeling a powerful union of emotions; their fear filling him with self-gratification, their bravery giving him a sense of a righteous challenge, the loss of attachment giving him strength. He could easily spend an hour with each one, indulging in the emotions like some kind of drug.

After a while, Kylo asks,“What do you think?”

“They’re...” Armitage begins, but can’t think of an appropriate word, beautiful, horrendous, enthralling, repulsive, “Like nothing else, truly. Thank you for sharing this with me.” He steps forward to slide his arm around Kylo’s waist, then moves in for a kiss. Kylo backs away. It isn’t like Kylo to turn down a sexual advancement.

“Uh, sorry, is kissing forbidden here, is this place sacred or something?” Armitage asks.

“Something like that,” Kylo says.

“I’m sorry,” Armitage says.

“It’s fine, you just, we just, need to be very careful when in such a strong Dark Side presence as this,” Kylo says.

“Oh,” Armitage says, beginning to feel like he is intruding on Kylo’s deepest, darkest secrets. He considers leaving, then a thought creeps into his head, Kylo shouldn’t be keeping secrets from him anyway, he feels that pang of strange jealousy, again. Kylo comes in here for hours at a time to perversely fondle these grotesqueries, yet he refuses to give him even a single kiss?

“Show me your favorite,” Armitage says darkly, almost seductively.

“Uh, well, 'favorite' isn’t quite the right word,” Kylo fumbles for a reply, taken off-guard by the request, “but I often visit this one.” He hesitantly pulls a box off the shelf. The box is one of the more intricately decorated ones, inlaid with shimmering shell and silver depicting some kind of lizard creature with wings, smoke swirling from its mouth. Kylo opens it. Inside is something small and twisted, not as well preserved as the others. There is a spiky energy coming off of it that Armitage can feel from several feet away. It steals his breath momentarily.

“What..is it?” Armitage asks.

“I cut it out of Ben Solo when I killed him,” Kylo tells him, “So as far as I’m concerned, it’s his weak, pathetic soul.”

Armitage feels the raw, wild energy scrambling off of the artifact like electricity. The twisted thing taunts him, luring him closer. He can sense its youthful energy, self-righteous yet naive. He wants to crush it. He hates it, hates its foolish pride, he hates that Kylo reveres it so. He has an overwhelming urge to touch it, to crush it in his fists, to squeeze the life out of it.

Kylo grabs his arm as he reaches for it and it’s like getting hit with a stun baton, almost knocking him to the ground. He pulls back violently and Kylo lets him go. Kylo turns, closing the box, to put it back on the shelf.

“Why didn’t you just tell me not to touch it?” Armitage asks, half humiliated, half spitting-mad.

“I didn’t think you would try to,” Kylo says.

Armitage groans, he has a headache and feels vaguely dizzy. Why had he tried to touch it? He had felt compelled to, thought that Kylo was inviting him to touch it.

“I thought you wanted me to,” he says, “Something was drawing me to touch it, I thought it was you.”

A look of concern passes over Kylo’s face, “That was the Force, the Dark Side…”

Armitage feels a sudden wave of nausea move through him. He sees a tenebrous Dark shroud curling around him like smoke. “I feel terrible,” he groans.

Kylo guides him to the door, pulls back the wooden partition and the curtain, waves his hand to open the door and leads him out. The Dark heaviness lifts almost immediately upon exiting the chamber.

“I’m very sorry, I didn’t realize…I should have known it was too long, I should have noticed I was starting to lose you,” Kylo berates himself.

Lose me? Armitage thinks. Kylo sounded deeply upset, scared even.

“I shouldn’t have let you stay in there so long.” Kylo helps Armitage to the bed and lowers him onto it. He brings him a glass of water, kneeling by the bed to help him sit up to drink it.

“You seemed to be really into it, and I’ve never meditated with someone else before, and we were connecting, and I'm sorry, it was all my fault …” he starts to ramble.

“Hey, I was really into it, at first, but I guess maybe I couldn’t handle it after all, eh?” Armitage chokes a laugh. “How long were we in there, anyway?” He realizes how exhausted he feels, like he’d just come out of a ground battle.

“A few hours,” Kylo says, glancing at the chronometer on the bedside stand.

“What?” There was no way they had been in there for longer than thirty minutes.

Kylo nods, looking down, obviously feeling guilty about it. It's only now that Armitage notices that Kylo's hair is completely dry. 

"Yeah, so maybe not so long next time," Armitage says, sliding over, motioning for Kylo to join him on the bed.

Kylo crawls into bed next to him, laying his arm across his chest, nuzzling into his neck. The Force between them feels...off. Before, it had felt like an exhilarating synergy, but now it seems distant, disconnected.

“What did you mean by ‘lose me’?” Armitage asks, still very confused and concerned about what had just happened.

“Sometimes the Dark Side has its own motivations that we have no control over. I should have sensed you slipping, but I think it was influencing me, too, clouding my thoughts,” Kylo says.

“Could it have hurt me? I mean, permanently?” Armitage asks, hoping that the awful incompleteness he is feeling now will not last very long.

Kylo looks up at him, “Yes, it could have.”

“What could’ve happened?” Armitage asks.

Kylo sighs, “People can be by consumed by the Dark Side, lose themselves completely, kill their loved ones.”

“I couldn't have done that, could I?” Armitage folds his arm over Kylo’s. He feels himself tremble.

“I wouldn’t have let that happen,” Kylo says.

“What did happen?” Armitage asks.

“You were affected by that artifact in a way that I didn’t anticipate. I shouldn’t have shown it to you. I shouldn’t have shown you any of it.” Kylo shakes his head and looks away.

“I wanted you to show it to me,” Armitage says.

“But you didn’t know how overpowering it could be and I did. It was very careless of me. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Of course I forgive you,” Armitage says, “Maybe next time just not for so long, right?”

“I don’t know if we should, you seem very susceptible to the Dark Side,” Kylo says.

Armitage isn’t sure if that’s a slight or a compliment. After all, Kylo is a disciple of the Dark Side, so it is possible to control it. Having the Dark Side be more attracted to him might be advantageous. He just needed to ease into in carefully, not jump into it without thinking. “We were in there for hours. I think it may have just been a bit overwhelming. If we did it for less time, it would be alright.”

“Maybe, after you have had more experience with the Force,” Kylo says.

There's something that Kylo seems very afraid of. Maybe he had the potential to be stronger in the Dark Side than Kylo. "Are you afraid I'll 'lose myself' and try to kill you?” Armitage asks.

“Of course not.” Kylo leans over Armitage to put his hands on either side of him, smiling,  “Besides, if ever you tried to kill me, I would have to kill you first.”

That is a terrifying thought. Armitage laughs uncertainly, knowing that Kylo is just teasing him, but still feels uneasy.

“That’s not funny,” Armitage scolds him, poking him in the ribs.

“Ow! Hey! What?” Kylo winces, but then leans back over him, combing his fingers through Armitage’s hair, “Well, then, Dear General, if you ever turn against me I’ll just let you kill me, okay?”

“That’s not funny, either!” Armitage pushes him off.

Kylo sits up with a huff, “I'm only kidding. You know I would never let that happen.”

Armitage pushes himself back to sit against the headboard. He senses Kylo’s heart fluttering. He glances at the ornate box on the bedstand, he wants to hold it, let it comfort him. He wonders why he craves that instead of his lover’s warm embrace. “Why didn’t you let me touch that artifact?”

“It’s... you were…” Kylo starts, but then trails off, turning to face away from him.

Armitage asks, “You were afraid I was going to flip out or something?”

“I saw what it was doing, and I stopped it," Kylo says, still not looking at him, "I was worried, yes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t trust you. The Force is very powerful, and it requires diligence and training to control it. You weren’t ready, and I should have known better, it’s my fault.”

Armitage leans forward to put his arm across Kylo’s shoulder. The Force crackles coldly between them.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Kylo mutters.

“I know. You were trying to protect me, and it’s not all your fault, I shouldn’t have been so insistent.” Armitage wraps his arms around him, “Thank you for showing it to me.”

He had asked Kylo to show him something private and personal, and, even though he’d been reluctant, knowing it was potentially dangerous, he’d shown it to him. Because he requested it. He doubts Kylo could refuse him any request, even it resulted in hurting both of them. He eases forward, the anxious crackling between them softens to a low buzz. From his bedside stand, Kylo’s heart pulsates softly, comfortingly.

 

After a few minutes, "Could you teach me how to do it?"

"Uh?"

“That electricity thing with your hand.”

“Oh...uh.”

"Don't worry, I'm not looking to take revenge or anything."

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thinking it's something like drinking at a party. It starts off fun and enjoyable, but, after a while, someone ends up indulging a bit too much and then things invariably go downhill.
> 
>    
> I have at least two more installments of this story. The next one is going to be gory, involving someone from Kylo's past, just to warn you. We find out Armitage Hux's dark, secret passion. I'm keeping these unchaptered so that people can easily avoid the stuff they don't want to read. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading, and you can (sometimes) find me on [tumblr.com/blog/slashedface](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/slashedface)


End file.
